1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image acquisition apparatus, a conversion apparatus and an image acquisition method.
2. Description of Related Art
Recent developments in security-related technologies are significant for a wide range of monitoring applications such as security screening and suspicious person monitoring system. Accordingly, the demand for an infrared camera that is applicable to the monitoring purpose in addition to a simple temperature measurement purpose is rapidly growing.
There are typically two kinds of infrared cameras: a quantum well infrared camera and a bolometer infrared camera. Quantum well infrared cameras generally require cooling for resistance to thermal noise, which causes a large size and high cost apparatus as a whole. On the other hand, although various types of bolometer infrared cameras have been developed with the growth of micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, the apparatus structure is complicated due to the need to place a mechanism for thermal detection in each pixel and a mechanism for signal reading from each pixel.
Therefore, there is a limit to simplification of the structure of existing infrared cameras.